HARRIS: Don't hurry reforms

Old-fashioned bull-headedness may make for quick satisfaction
but within Oceanside city politics it could create partisan rifts
wider than those in Congress.

City Councilmen Jack Feller, Jerry Kern and Gary Felien are
taking a huge political gamble in their push to get two governance
reform measures on the June ballot without prior public review.

In
advancing their plans
in this rush-rush manner, the three
Republicans could stir up so much anger and bad blood that it will
taint for years any discussion of otherwise reasonable ideas for
governance reform.

Even if successful, they will have established powerful
precedents and tools to act with that someday could mean the end of
the conservative principles they support. After all, Oceanside's
electorate continues to drift to the left, and the days of
Republican domination of the council are numbered.

On Wednesday, the council's ruling troika voted to start
preparing to place on the June primary ballot two revisions to the
city's new charter. Neither has been subject to any formal review
process by the public.

Mayor Jim Wood and Councilwoman Esther Sanchez both opposed,
correctly arguing that the public deserved a chance to study and
suggest possible changes to the revisions.

One proposal would number the four council member seats and have
candidates run for a specific position, with runoffs if no one gets
more than 50 percent of the votes.

This is a great idea, but one that should have run the gamut of
public review. Unfortunately, it is being seen as just another
troika power play.

Existing practice has candidates running at large with the top
two finishers declared "winners." As a result, individuals can land
on the council with relatively little support.

Indeed, Sanchez and Feller both first became council members
with meager pluralities. Out of 16 candidates in the 2000
elections, Sanchez led the field with 20 percent of the vote;
Feller came in second with a whopping 12.8 percent.

The second issue would have all municipal special elections
decided by mail-in balloting only. This is being touted as a
money-saver: no polling places to find and set up, no voting
booths, no poll workers.

While popular in some areas, elections by mail are relatively
rare in North County. Oceanside voters last dealt with a mail-in
election in August 2008 with Tri-City Healthcare District's failed
bond measure.

Mail-in elections often tilt in favor of a relatively small
number of highly motivated citizens.

And mail-in ballots often get misplaced by voters. Moreover,
mail-only elections create confusion for those used to going to
polling places on "Election Day" and are ripe for fraud.

Two of the FKF troika, Feller and Kern, were part of the 3-2
decision to jam the establishment of a city charter onto the 2010
primary ballot without prior public vetting. The critical third
vote came from their political soulmate, Rocky Chavez, in his last
meeting as a councilman.

Major heartburn from that move still persists for many of the
city's more moderate residents.

And the council trio has already enraged a segment of Oceanside
by putting on the June ballot a measure to end existing rent
control for mobile-home parks.

Indeed, just that issue alone may motivate a good number of
folks to vote in June who otherwise would have stayed away from a
yawner of an election.

Face it: Without the rent control issue, the "hottest" contest
on the ballot for Oceanside residents is deciding which two
Republicans will advance to a November runoff for the 76th Assembly
District position.

But by tossing these two charter revisions on the ballot in the
same hurried fashion used for the charter itself, the trio is just
ginning up more trouble and raising the potential for all their
reform ideas to fail.

The council trio needs to pick its battles and the time to wage
them. Phasing out rent control is already on the ballot. If the
three really wish to see that issue pass, they will wave off the
charter revisions at the Feb. 29 council meeting.

Critics of Feller, Kern and Felien have long accused the three
of being power-grabbers.

The trio's reliance on reform-by-speed-dial as their standard
operating procedure just strengthens that perception. And that can
kill otherwise good and grand ideas.